


No Smoking Next To The Flowers

by beeskneeshuh



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/F, emmalatte, its pretty gay, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 19:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeskneeshuh/pseuds/beeskneeshuh
Summary: Emma is having a bad day and takes it out on Charlotte. The next day Charlotte comes into the coffee shop Emma works at. Emma is mortified at first but slowly starts to develop a crush on the other woman. What could go wrong?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TGWDLM doesn't even really exist yet but here I am. Hope you like it!

So far, Emma’s day had been less than great. For starters, her boss asked her to come in for a shift in the middle of the day, even though she always worked mornings. Her shift would end thirty minutes before her evening class started so she would have to bust ass to get there on time. To make matters worse, when she got in her car to go to work, the damn thing wouldn’t start. No one she knew was available to give her a ride so she had to walk to work, and without a car she probably wouldn’t even be able to make it to her class before it ended so she decided to just skip it today.

 

She had to practically run most of the way to work to make sure she wasn’t late. Once she was about a block away she decided to slow down and walk at a normal pace so she wouldn’t be so sweaty and out of breath when she got to work. She was walking next to an office building that was across the street from the coffee shop she worked at. Since she normally worked mornings, she knew a lot of the people who worked at the office because they would stop by the shop before work. They were always nice to her, except there was one guy, whose name she was pretty sure was Ted, who gave her a little bit of douche-y vibes.

 

As she walked, she noticed a woman up ahead of her standing by what Emma assumed was a side door to the office building. She was smoking right next to a bunch of flowers that were next to the door. Normally, this wouldn’t bug Emma that much, but today she was in a particularly bad mood, so seeing this woman smoking next to a bunch of beautiful flowers just tipped her right over the edge. Didn’t this woman know that cigarette smoke damages plants??? How could she be so thoughtless? Emma reminded herself that not everyone was as much of a plant nerd as she was to try to calm herself down. And it helped, but not enough to stop her from wanting to say something to the woman.

 

“You know, you shouldn’t smoke right next to plants, it can harm them,” she said as nicely as she could despite her bad mood. She didn’t stop walking as she said it and didn’t get to see the woman’s reaction or whether or not she actually moved. Now that she had said it she realized how rude it probably came off and instantly regretted saying anything at all. It wasn’t something she would do on a normal day and she was slightly embarrassed that she had done it and didn’t want to make that worse by looking behind her now. When she got to the corner to cross the street, she finally looked back and the woman was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day Emma worked her morning shift as usual. The regular group from the office across the street walked in just before the morning rush.

 

“The usual?” she asked as they walked up to the counter.

 

“Yeah, plus one more,” the man whose name Emma knew to be Paul turned around to get someone’s attention, “hey, Charlotte, what do you want?”

 

The woman in question, Charlotte, Emma guessed, gently pushed passed the other members of their group to get to the counter. She was looking up at the menu and hadn’t looked at Emma yet, but Emma realized immediately that she was the woman from the day before who she had told to not smoke next to the plants. She hadn’t thought that she would ever see the woman again and was slightly mortified.

 

“Ummm, I will have a…” she trailed off as she looked down from the menu at Emma, and clearly also recognized her. A small smile crossed her face before she continued. “A medium caramel macchiato, please.”

 

Emma quickly looked at the screen of the register to avoid having to make eye contact and punched in all of the orders. She managed to ring them up without having to look at Charlotte, but she could feel Charlotte still looking at her. She started making their orders and tried to pretend that she wasn’t extremely embarrassed.

 

Once she finished making all of their drinks she scribbled their names on the cups and started calling out their names. “Paul, here’s yours. Ted, here you go. Bill, this one’s yours.” She paused for a moment, now realizing that Charlotte hadn’t actually told her her name, but she wrote it on the cup because she heard Paul call her Charlotte and now she felt weird because now Charlotte would think she was some sort of stalker or something and-

 

Breathe, Emma told herself.

 

“And Charlotte. Here you go,” she said as she handed Charlotte her drink. She looked at her for the first time since she had ordered and noticed she was still smiling at her. She was wearing a sweater with a kitten on it that Emma probably would have thought was silly if anyone else was wearing it but it seemed to fit Charlotte perfectly. Her hair was frizzy but didn’t look messy. Emma realized this was the first time she had _really_ looked at Charlotte and thought she was kind of (really) pretty.

 

“You’re the girl that told me not to smoke by the flowers yesterday, right?” Charlotte asked. Emma could tell by her tone that she wasn’t upset, which calmed her nerves a little, but not enough to keep her from blushing. She was also grateful that Charlotte didn’t accuse her of being a stalker.

 

“Uh, yeah, yeah that was me. Sorry if you thought I was rude or something, I wasn’t trying to be but I was just having a bad day and then I saw you smoking right next to some really nice flowers and I want to be a botanist so I’m kind of passionate about that sort of stuff, and just I saw that and I normally wouldn’t have-” her rambling was cut off by Charlotte quietly laughing. Emma knitted her brow at her.

 

“You don’t have to apologize, honey, I wasn’t upset. Not many people would care enough to say something. It wasn’t rude at all.” Charlotte said, and all Emma could think about was that she had just called her honey.

 

At that point Emma noticed that the rest of Charlotte’s office group was ready to go and waiting on Charlotte and she suddenly got self conscious.

 

“Oh, uh, well, thanks. You should probably get going, I think they’re waiting up on you,” Emma said, gesturing towards where the group was standing near the door.

 

“I guess I probably should. It was nice meeting you,” Charlotte leaned forward slightly and squinted to read Emma’s name tag, “Emma.” She smiled before turning around and following the three men out the door. It wasn’t until the door was closed that Emma realized she probably should have said “you too.”

 

* * *

 

 

Throughout the rest of the day Emma tried to forget about her last two encounters with Charlotte. But she just couldn’t stop thinking about how nice she had been even though Emma had been a total jerk. She mostly couldn’t stop thinking about how pretty Charlotte was. She tried to convince herself that there was no point in not being able to stop thinking about someone who she would never see again.

 

It was probably just a coincidence that she came into the coffee shop the day after Emma had said something to her outside the office, right? The fact that she ordered a “medium” gave away that she probably had never been to a Starbucks before and her coming in that day was most likely a one time thing.

 

Or maybe not.

 

The next day, when the office regulars came in, Charlotte was with them again. Emma tried to keep a casual expression on her face despite slightly freaking out inside as they walked up.

 

“The usual?”

 

“Yes, plus…”

 

“I remember.” She smiled and put in their order and then Ted paid for the group. The rest of the group except for Charlotte walked to the other end of the counter as Emma started making the drinks.

 

“You remembered my order?”

 

“Well, it’s pretty easy to remember when someone orders a _medium_ at Starbucks,” Emma teased. She was much more confident than she had been the day before.

 

“Well, sorry I don’t know your weird Starbucks language,” Charlotte teased back.

 

Emma chuckled and looked up at Charlotte. They just smiled at each other for a moment before Emma remembered she was in the middle of making their drinks and got back to it. Charlotte walked over to where the rest of the group was standing and joined in on their conversation.

 

She finished their drinks and wrote the names on each of them, deciding to put a little smiley face next to Charlotte’s name. She gave everyone their drinks and made sure to say “have a nice day!” before Charlotte could make her forget.


	2. Chapter 2

“How come yours got a smiley face?” Ted asked as they walked into the office building. Of course Charlotte had noticed the smiley face right away but she didn’t want to draw any attention to it, or the fact that it made her inexplicably happy.

 

“Oh, uh, I don’t know,” Charlotte said sheepishly, looking at her cup as if she hadn’t noticed it before. 

 

“I’ve been flirting with that barista for weeks now and you go in there twice and she already likes you more than me. Unfair,” Ted pouted. Charlotte rolled her eyes. She suddenly felt bad for Emma for having to deal with customers like Ted all the time.

 

The day dragged on. It was a typical day at the office: answering emails, a couple meetings, taking care of payroll, and telling Ted to stop throwing paper airplanes at Paul at least four times.

 

When she pulled into her driveway at the end of the day there was already a car parked in her spot. She knew it belonged to Dave, who worked with her husband and occasionally came over on Friday nights to watch football. Charlotte didn’t particularly like him and tried to avoid him as much as possible whenever he was there.

 

Before she even opened the front door she could hear yelling coming from inside the house. Apparently a team had just scored a touchdown, but they didn’t sound too happy about it. She went inside and set her purse and keys on the table next to the door. 

 

“Hi, honey,” she said as she walked towards the living room. There were several empty beer bottles on the table and both men had a bottle in their hands. She did not want to deal with the two of them if they were drunk and decided that she would eat dinner as quickly as possible and go to bed. 

 

“Hey babe,” Sam grunted without looking up from the television. Charlotte didn’t know much about football but from the looks of it one of the teams was way ahead of the other and it wasn’t the team they were rooting for.

 

She made her way to the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. There was leftover spaghetti from a couple nights ago in there so she scooped some into a bowl and heated it up in the microwave. She wanted to eat in the kitchen but Sam insisted she watch the game with them so she sat on the unoccupied couch to eat her dinner.

 

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear a shirt that didn’t have a cat on it,” Dave said to her after a few minutes. She looked down at the shirt she was wearing. It was a light blue sweater that had three kittens playing with a ball of yarn on it. She didn’t know how to respond so she just took a bite of spaghetti and shrugged.

 

“I’ve tried to buy her nice clothes without any cats on them but she still wears those  _ god awful _ cat sweaters. I swear one day I’ll just burn all of them so she’ll have to wear something else,” Sam replied. This got the two men to start laughing, but Charlotte just stared into her bowl and continued eating. She didn’t think it was a big deal that she always wore cat sweaters. She liked them. 

 

She quickly finished her dinner and excused herself to go to bed. 

 

* * *

 

The next day was Saturday. Charlotte didn’t have to work but she found herself driving to the coffee shop for a coffee anyways. Until recently she had always made a cup of coffee at home every morning, but her husband tended to get on her nerves even more first thing in the morning, so she had decided to start getting coffee with the guys from work so she could leave her house earlier and not have to deal with her husband. Which is what she told herself she was doing on the way to the coffee shop, just trying to get away from her husband. 

 

Just before she walked in she suddenly got nervous. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous. Getting coffee was nothing to be nervous about. She straightened her sweater, took a deep breath and walked in.

 

She smiled to herself when she saw that Emma was working. She was taking someone’s order and hadn’t seen Charlotte yet. Charlotte waited patiently for her to finish the person’s order and stepped forward when it was her turn to order. Emma’s face lit up when she saw her.

 

“Oh, hey! No entourage today?” 

 

“Nope, just me. Hope you aren’t disappointed,” Charlotte threw back with a smirk.

 

“Not at all. You want your usual?” Emma asked. Charlotte nodded and gave her the money for her drink, putting the change she got back into the tip jar. If Sam had been with her he would have told her that tipping is supposed to be for exceptional service, not any service, and is an insult to customers, and he probably would have gone on about it until they went back to their car. But luckily her husband was not there so she just got to appreciate the smile Emma gave her when she put the change in the jar. 

 

Charlotte waited on the other end of the counter while Emma made her drink. She remembered that Emma had mentioned wanting to be a botanist while rambling an apology the other day and wondered why she was working at a coffee shop if that was what she really wanted to do.

 

“So you want to be a botanist, huh?” Charlotte asked as Emma handed her her drink. She pretended not to notice that there was another smiley face next to her name.

 

“Yeah, why?” Emma leaned down to rest her elbows on the counter. “You’re not gonna give me crap over what happened the other day, are you? Because I already said I was sorry.”

 

“No, I’m not. I was just wondering why you work at a Starbucks if your true passion is… plants,” she asked, making a funny face as she finished the sentence.

 

“I will have you know plants are very interesting! We literally wouldn’t even to be able to exist without them! Haven’t you heard of that plant that closes its leaves when you touch it? That is so cool! And did you know that figs get pollinated by a special kind of fig wasp and then the wasps lay their eggs in them? That one’s a little more gross and I haven’t eaten a fig since I learned that but it’s still cool!” Emma was getting riled up and Charlotte thought it was adorable. It was a nice change of pace for Charlotte, being around someone who is so passionate about something. 

 

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry! Plants are very cool,” Charlotte put her hands up in defense. “Back to my question, why do you work here then?”

 

“Well, I’m currently in community college so I can become a botanist, but college costs money and jobs are for making money. And honestly, this was the best job I could get with practically no experience.” 

 

“Sounds like you must be pretty busy.”

 

“Yeah, I haven’t really had much free time lately,” Emma replied. “Hey, do you wanna sit down and talk? I was about to take my lunch break anyway.”

 

“Sure, yeah, that works.”

 

“Cool! Just sit down wherever, I’ve gotta clock out real quick and grab my lunch.”

 

Charlotte picked a table in the corner of the coffee shop and sat down. She sipped her drink and waited until Emma came out of the door that had  _ Employees Only  _ written on it and sat down next to her. She had a tupperware container full of salad and a Diet Coke with her. Charlotte watched as she took the lid off the container and started eating the salad.

 

“If you love plants so much then why are you eating them? Isn’t that kind of like a zoologist only eating meat?” Charlotte teased, mostly because it was funny to see Emma riled up.

 

“That is  _ so _ not the same. Salad is good for you!” Emma took her next bite of salad while locking eyes with Charlotte, as if trying prove her point. Charlotte just raised an eyebrow at her.

 

They sat there for a few moments, Charlotte occasionally taking a sip of her coffee and Emma eating her lunch. It was a comfortable silence. Emma was the one to break the it.

 

“Oh hey! I love this song!” she blurted, starting to move her head with the song that was playing. Charlotte didn’t recognize the song, but she didn’t listen to music much so she wouldn’t have recognized most songs. 

 

“What song is this? I’ve never heard it before.”

 

“It’s called ‘Little of Your Love.’ It’s by a group called HAIM. I really like their stuff” Emma replied. Charlotte hadn’t heard of the song or the artist before, but started listening to the song. If Emma liked it so much it must be good. 

 

“That’s a pretty good song! Definitely catchy,” Charlotte said when the song was over. Emma smiled. “What other music do you like?”

 

“Uhh, I guess I kind of like all kinds of music. Except country,” Emma answered. “Enough talking about me. I hardly know anything about you. What do you do at that office across the street?” Emma asked, looking genuinely interested. 

 

“I’m the office manager, so I pretty much just make sure everything in the office goes smoothly, take care of payroll, order supplies for the office, stuff like that. I do a bunch of stuff, really.”

 

“That sounds exhausting,” replied Emma.

 

“It can be sometimes. The work really isn’t too hard, but sometimes my coworkers can get on my nerves. Like, you know that guy Ted?” Emma nodded. “Total pain in the ass.”

 

“I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks he’s annoying.”

 

“This job seems exhausting, too. I bet you get annoying customers like Ted all the time.”

 

“It’s not really that bad. Yeah, there are a few bad apples, but nothing I can’t handle.” Emma paused for a moment. “And sometimes I get cool customers that I become friends with despite verbally assaulting them.”

 

Charlotte laughed. As they had been talking, the coffee shop had been slowly getting more busy and the boy working the register was looking increasingly stressed out.

 

“I should probably get back to work now, it’s that kids first week and he looks like he’s about to pass out,” Emma chuckled.

 

“We definitely don’t want that. It was nice talking to you.”

 

“Yeah, you too. I mean, it was nice talking. To you. Too.” Emma smiled awkwardly and left, going back through the  _ Employees Only  _ door. After a minute she was back behind the counter.

 

Charlotte stayed at the table, finishing her coffee. She thought about how Emma had called her a friend. She hadn’t had many friends lately, she pretty much only ever went to work and went home, and there was no one at work that she felt any desire to hang out with outside of work. Come to think of it, she hadn’t had many friends since she married Sam. 

 

When she got home, the living room was still a mess from the night before. She had just started picking up when her husband came into the room.

 

“What are you so happy for?” he asked, sounding annoyed.

 

“What do you mean?” she replied, not feeling like she had been acting any different than usual.

 

“You’re humming. You only hum when you’re happy.”

 

“Oh. I didn’t even realize I was,” she said as she continued to clean up.

 

Sam just stared at her for a moment as if trying to read her mind, but gave up after a moment, grumbling something and sitting on the couch. “Can you move, I want to watch the news,” he said.

 

“Sure, honey.” She finished picking up all the trash and took it out to the garbage bin. As she was putting the garbage in the bin she realized she was humming the song that Emma had said she liked. She smiled at herself and went back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I had to learn about fig wasps then so do you.


End file.
